


crocoideae

by owlsareheadturners



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: M/M, PWP, i have zero excuse for this, school days natori and matoba, weird excuse for an aphrodisiac
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-09 23:59:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13492548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlsareheadturners/pseuds/owlsareheadturners
Summary: Natori goes to Matoba's house to witness a Summoning Ritual and ends up with more than he bargained for.





	crocoideae

**Author's Note:**

> literally. zero. plot. i live for matoba's appearances.

“Come inside, Shuuichi-san.”

Natori stops examining his fingernails; looks up from where he’s been waiting under the shadow of a large beech tree in the front yard. He pushes off from the bark, gives Matoba a once-over.

“You kept me waiting.”

“I did.” The blatant admission shows no sign of remorse. Natori sighs, draws his coat more tightly around him.

“It’s cold, you know.”

“Then come inside, Shuuichi-san. Or would you like me to carry you over the threshold like a bride?”

“You—” Natori splutters, the area above his cheekbones swelling red. Matoba laughs, cool and open like a spring breeze. “Come on in. We’ll have tea. That’ll warm you up.”

 

* * *

 

“You’re sure here early, Shuuichi-san,” Matoba says, by way of enquiry, though his tone is neutrally flat, observing from a polite distance. He takes a measured sip of tea, precise in his careless propriety.

“I didn’t want them to throw me out again,” Natori grumbles, slurping his tea loudly so it won’t burn his tongue, “I already missed out on last month’s session, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to miss this one, too.”

The unspoken words hang in this air, still and heavy like down. _I envy you for being able to live here, to attend all the summonings because of your power and status._

“There, there,” Matoba soothes, as if he were responding to the unvoiced sentiment. “That’s why you’re here now, aren’t you? We’ll find a comfy cupboard for you—” here he skilfully dodges Natori’s pointed glare— “And you can watch the whole ceremony without them noticing. It’s pretty exciting, you know: you never know what spirit you’ll add to your collection from the summoning each time.”

He looks genuinely excited, Natori notices with a shiver, the light in his eyes so intense it reminds him of a keen arousal.

Natori clears his throat. “Um, yeah. Thanks.”

 

* * *

 

“Here.” Matoba slides open the paper door, steps in, and beckons him over to the side of the large tatami hall that the Clan has always used as a summoning chamber. Natori follows, his socks scraping softly against the woven mats. The room smells of the strong weave of grass and spells, the build-up of incantations from times gone by that still hang like ribbons in the air and slip, smooth and sensuous, across his skin. Every sense in him is drawn to the energy; burns close to the surface, like a bed of coals, and he feels his own weak instincts respond, attracted to the power and the light like night creatures. How must Matoba feel then; his magnetic, metallic blood crashing against the walls of every artery like a raging tide? Indeed Natori’s never quite seen those red eyes as alight as they are now, and when Matoba sucks in a breath, his throat quivering, Natori’s body responds, almost intuitively, with a deep exhale. It takes almost all his will to tear his gaze away from the exposed slip of white revealed by Matoba’s loose collar, and turn his attention to the small crawlspace behind the wall that Matoba’s revealed for him, the paper wall-panel having been pulled away to one side.

Matoba gets down on hands and knees in front of him, an action that makes a slight heat rise to Natori’s cheeks, and shuffles into the space. “See,” he says, voice muffled slightly by the cramped interior. “You can watch everything from here.”

Natori must have stood there a long while with a vacant expression on his face, because when he comes to, Matoba is looking up at him curiously. “What’s the matter, Shuuichi-san? Don’t you want to have a look? Come on in.”

“Not if you don’t get out of the way,” Natori grumbles, balling up his emotions into a spit-wad of annoyance. Matoba blinks at him, curious red eyes watching him for a moment, and then he’s disappeared, his dark clothing and hair blending themselves into the darkness as he shifts further back into the crawlspace. Natori bends down and crawls after him.

The space is bigger than it had seemed from the outside; easily big enough for two, and Matoba guides him along the space, which Natori slowly begins to discern, from half a minute or so of blind groping, seems to be some sort of passageway. He crawls along, following the distinct shuffling sounds of the knees of Matoba’s yukata against the wooden floor, until late afternoon sunlight assails his face without warning. Groaning, he throws up a hand to shield his eyes, and when the blindness clears, is able to make out the blurry outline of Matoba’s silhouette, standing with hand outstretched towards him. “Need help?”

Natori reaches out, grasps the proffered hand, and lets Matoba drag him to his feet. Despite his lithe frame, Matoba possesses a quiet power betrayed only by his prowess with a bow and arrow; the way any shot of his could easily punch through a tree, stripping the arrow of its feathers on the way in.

He lets his gaze wander about the new room. It’s large, sparsely decorated with a painting on the wall and a single, slender potted plant on the alcove below. A bookshelf throws its reach across the entirety of another wall, and the customary tea-set sits on a low table in the centre of the large room, but that’s the extent of visible personalization. Matoba catches him staring. “Do you like it?”

“This is… your room?” He’s never seen Matoba’s room; he’d thought such a personal thing would be reserved for the eyes of Matoba and Matoba only, but—

“One of my rooms,” Matoba admits, “but yes, for the purposes of this particular residence, my room. Welcome.”

Natori stammers out the customary “Sorry for the intrusion,” and sticks his hands in his pockets, unsure of how to proceed.

“Well, don’t just stand there, Shuuichi-san,” Matoba chides, amusement apparent in his lips, “Sit down. There’s still some time till the summoning.”

Natori sits. “You have a secret passageway? In your room? That goes straight to the Summoning Chamber?”

“Not just the Summoning Chamber. These passageways go to every corner of the house.”

 _Every corner…_ Just how much of a control freak was Matoba?

“Well, it wasn’t my idea, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Matoba says with a shrug, his lips pouted and his brows drawn together. “Some ancestor of mine thought it would be a good idea, to be nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Though,” he adds in a soft, downy murmur, his lashes lowered, “I don’t wholly disagree. Just keep silent while you watch, Shuuichi-san. I wouldn’t want the existence of this network to be revealed.”

Natori nods, still muted by this new discovery. It wasn’t something beyond his expectations, _per se,_ but to have it confirmed that Matoba was this sort of person—no, what was he thinking? Of course Matoba was every inch of the person that Natori had expected him to be since they’d first met. Nothing was wrong with that, and nothing had changed.

 

* * *

 

Matoba has the most astounding personal collection of books on exorcism and the spirit world in general that Natori has ever seen. He’s already gone through a whole volume, and he can’t stop biting into the knowledge, tearing off chunks of it and swallowing as fast as he can. At this point he’s not even aware of where Matoba is, or what he’s doing; how could Natori have struggled through the first year or so of his career as an Exorcist without possessing the arsenal that all these books had to offer?

A gentle tap on the shoulder wakes him; he starts, and Matoba plucks the book away from him. “I’ve never seen you look so intense, Shuuichi-san,” he remarks, flipping the book shut to peer at its cover. “Interesting… Most beginners wouldn’t even _dream_ of touching this.”

“I’m no beginner.”

“Very well, then, _Master_ Natori Shuuichi. The summoning’s about to start.”

 

* * *

 

A Summoning, Natori soon learns, consisted of a ring of old men and women (and one teenager) seated in a circle around a ring marked with talismans and various spices knotted together, with an unidentifiable sandy substance sprinkled in the middle, such that it closely resembled a sumo arena.

Peering from the gap between panel and panel, Natori watches as one of the elders, an old woman with elaborately coiled hair, begins to murmur under her breath, head bowed. After half a minute or so a man sitting diagonally opposite her takes up the chant, and then someone else, and so the chant passes on from person to person, growing steadily in intensity and volume. Matoba receives the chant last, but as soon as he begins to speak Natori feels the air shift perceptibly, as if the entire house and all its occupants had been cut out of the air with a knife and stuck back into reality a few centimetres to the left. His head spins a little and he almost keels over, but manages to keep himself barely upright.

The group is moving now in a slow, waving dance; a man with a long, wispy beard kneels up slowly, and then sinks back down, and then the next person takes up the action, and then the next. A slow, pulsing wail begins to beat time against Natori’s eardrums, much like the low whine of a bass speaker.

Matoba’s voice cuts through the monotony, high and clear. “ _Aa-aa-hi-ki-yo-o-re-i-sa-a-an, yo-o-o-bu-yo, ko-chi-ra-ni-o-i-de-e—_ ”

Natori’s spellbound, something in his blood irrevocably drawn to Matoba’s crooning, deeply seductive call; is only vaguely aware of a slow shifting of the particles within the ring, the silhouette of something taking shape. The summoners seem to be increasingly agitated as the _youkai_ gains mass and form, writhing in the dust on the ground. Even Matoba’s brow is furrowed with concentration, but his eyes never break contact with the half-summoned spirit in the ring, coaxing it through the border that separates its world and theirs. The spirit seems to be a creature the size of a lion, with a white strip along its flank, a black tail, and a grotesque, three-petaled mouth like a claw toy. Even as it comes into material being, it is fighting off Matoba’s attempts to seal its newly-minted form; it writhes and struggles heavily against the spoken bonds holding it in place. Sensing an imminent battle, Matoba ramps up the force of his spells, and a heavy spiritual pressure ripples out from him, slamming against the creature… and a wholly unsuspecting Natori.

The next second Natori’s flat on his back on the wooden floor, his head slamming to the ground under the immense force of spiritual power. There’s a loud thud as his skull cracks against the floorboards, and for just a split second, Matoba’s chant falters.

That split second is all it takes for the _youkai_ to struggle free of the spells holding it down, and explode from the ring, blasting a huge spray of sand and spices onto all of the exorcists, who are blown back from the ring by the force. The creature lands straight onto Matoba, and Natori can do nothing but watch in horror as Matoba wrestles with the enormous _youkai_ , his arms straining as he tries to push it off him. The other exorcists are curled up, some of them motionless, others shivering; flailing out weakly at entities unseen.

Matoba is losing the fight; the creature is now trying to eat his head, its clawlike, three-petaled mouth closing around his neck, and now there’s no way Natori can just stand by and do nothing. He bursts out of the crawlspace, yells the first incantation that comes to mind. He’d meant for a cleansing spell, to purify the creature out of existence, but somehow in his panic he’d jumbled up the syntax, and the resulting, poorly-worded spell does nothing but cause an avalanche of soapy water to fall onto the creature.

By some twisted stroke of luck, however, the creature shrieks as though it’s just been struck by boiling water, and starts to melt away like grease, puddles of white, black and red fur cascading from its body. It glares at Natori with an unspeakable hatred before the last of it finally falls away, dissolving into nothing. The room now smells strongly of dishwashing liquid.

The silence is broken only by a weak, choking cough, which seems to come from Matoba’s general vicinity, and Natori rushes over, skidding on puddles of soap.

“Matoba—”

“Shuuichi-san. You’re still alive. What a surp—” He breaks off, coughing, his back arching off the floor as he strains.

“I’ll get you back to your room,” Natori stammers, “I—I’ll clean up this mess—”

“You, Shuuichi-san? You don’t look as if you’ve touched a mop in your life. That aside,” he adds, before Natori has any time to retort, “Getting me back to my room would be good. Preferably—” he gestures to his sopping wet clothes—“Preferably, unseen.”

 

* * *

 

Natori pulls Matoba’s obi loose, and frees him from the strings underneath it that keep the two free ends of the yukata closed. “Can I—”

“Go ahead,” Matoba answers. He takes a slow, deep breath, lets it escape from him in a controlled hiss.

Natori pushes open the fabric, pulls the sleeves from Matoba’s arms as quickly as he can without looking, pushes against Matoba’s bare hip to roll him off the yukata. He grabs the wet garment, wads it up. “Just toss it onto the porch outside,” Matoba instructs, and Natori does as he’s told.

“Keep the door open, Shuuichi-san,” Matoba sighs. It’s already night, and a full, plump moon is hanging over the courtyard, staining the tips of the plants outside a silvery white. Natori heads into the room again, where Matoba is sitting up, using the low table for support. For someone bred into a family of high ranking Exorcists; for all his prim propriety, Matoba is uncharacteristically unashamed of his nakedness; he keeps his posture open, but tucks the lower half of his body underneath the table, Natori supposes, for his sake.

A deep blue silence begins to bloom within the room, and Natori tries to fill it. “I’m… really sorry. For what happened. Just now.” Only after the words are out of his mouth does he realise the potential mistake—he’s now cut himself off from other avenues of conversation. But what else would there be to talk about, after a thing like that?

“It was nothing life-threatening.” Matoba waves him off, though he still looks clearly shaken.

“It was going to _eat_ you!”

“Still, nothing life-threatening.” Matoba smiles weakly, bites his lip. “You have much to learn, Shuuichi-san. That particular type of _youkai_ is what’s known as a kishaku. Well, usually they’re much smaller, and much less powerful, but there’s no mistaking it.”

“And kishaku want to eat you?”

Matoba takes a deep breath, nails digging into his thigh. “Actually, quite the contrary. I don't know what was up with that one, but a kishaku usually wants you to eat it.” Seeing Natori’s puzzled expression, he continues. “They enjoy the warm and moist environment of the human stomach, and feast on oily foods that the human consumes. It’s said that a human that comes into contact with a kishaku will experience a hugely increased sexual appetite due to the creature’s twisting of the host’s spiritual energy, which continues until the host is fully drained.” He swallows, squeezes his eyes shut, continues. “The creature can be expelled prematurely by first starving it of oily foods, and the effects of its curse ended with a concoction of tiger’s intestines.”

Natori shudders. “Then why did it—”

He gets no further than that, because suddenly Matoba is kissing him fiercely, driving his hands up Natori’s shirt, and fuck if it isn’t wholly unexpected, but that just makes it even hotter.

“What the hell are you doing, Matoba?” Natori gasps, voice trembling.

“Can't—anymore—I'm sorry, Shuuichi-san—”

Natori struggles against Matoba for a few futile seconds, then lets himself be overwhelmed; gives into the calling of his blood that’s been assuaging him ever since he walked into the Summoning Chamber.

Matoba’s teeth leave marks on his shoulder; his tongue licks a wet line in the dip above Natori’s collarbone, and his left hand tugs urgently at Natori’s zipper while he squeezes coarsely with his right, prompting a surprised squeak from Natori that Matoba strangles with yet another deep, frantic kiss, panting fiercely into Natori’s mouth. Natori kisses him back, hand behind his head, pulls Matoba’s soft body into his lap. Matoba’s hard to the point of leaking already—had he been that way ever since the kishaku had attacked him?—and when Natori reaches down to touch him he hisses, almost as if in pain. Natori starts to jerk him off while Matoba grinds down onto Natori’s thigh; he can feel himself getting hard as well against his underwear, his pants left stuck somewhere around his knees from Matoba’s impatience.

Matoba comes hard onto Natori’s hand, but shows no signs of stopping; his body shines with a sheen of silver-laced sweat, illuminated by the full moon, and he’s crying and moaning and mewling under Natori’s touch, tortured by his insatiable need for pleasure.

“It’s not enough,” Matoba groans, eyes wild, as he recovers from his orgasm, spread-eagled and panting against the tatami mats, “It’s not enough, I have a bottle of oil, in the bottom drawer, of the bookshelf, please—”

Natori finds the liquid with fumbling hands, drizzles the sweet-smelling stuff over his fingers. Matoba is waiting ready for him, fingers of one hand spreading his hole wide.

“Put them in—”

He cries out as Natori slides in a finger: it’s hard work; Matoba fits so tightly around his finger that he’s not sure there’s room for another one, but Matoba is _begging_ him; _Please, please Shuuichi-san; I’ll die if you don’t, I’ll die,_ and Natori believes him so he does; Matoba is sobbing into his forearm as he clenches hard around Natori’s fingers, and then Natori begins to loosen him up, scissoring and stretching and doing whatever he thinks feels right, if only to takes some pressure off of Matoba. He’s never done this before, he doesn’t think Matoba has either, but their instincts are beacons enough, and soon enough Matoba is thrusting backwards onto his fingers, mewling every time Natori goes in particularly deep.

When Matoba comes his back is arched and chest thrust out, every lean line clearly visible under the moonlight. The floor is a mess by now but neither of them are very much in the right mind to care.

Matoba is crawling towards him, tugs Natori’s underwear past his thighs, and Natori lets him, let Matoba swallow his cock and slick it with his spit, lets Matoba suck him off clumsily but earnestly, hair tickling Natori’s thighs as he bobs his head up and down. Natori doesn’t come due to technique, or anything like it, but something more like a tidal call of Matoba’s overflowing spiritual energy to his blood; his touch excites and inflames Natori at the same time; his skin burns at every point that Matoba’s touched him; his veins are on fire. Matoba tries to disentangle himself from Natori; falls onto his ass instead, but he somehow manages to make the whole display look intensely erotic, rolling onto his back with his erection— _already?_ —on full and unabashed display.

“Come inside, Shuuichi-san,” Matoba pants urgently, hands spreading his soft thighs wide apart. Natori can see more of what’s inside him than he wants to; than he’d ever expected to, and it makes him shiver cold and electric all over his body, gathers a thicket of sensation in his crotch. Matoba’s eyes slant crimson, slashed wide open by his smile, and Natori swallows hard, pushes into Matoba’s body.

The moment he enters Matoba, time hits a wall of amber, and everything is trapped in the web of golden gossamer. He sees Matoba’s expression change in slow motion as his erection forces open Matoba’s passage, watches Matoba’s eyes startle wide and his pupils dilate, almost as if all of his body is responding in a single, sensual wave to Natori’s presence.

Matoba finally regains the presence of mind to smile, though it's a lopsided, pained creature that catches on the ragged edges of Natori’s aching heart and tugs, splits open his veins to flood his loins with more of that molten fire. Natori curls his torso forwards, seeks out Matoba’s crooked grin like a fish straining towards a hook, feels the burning bite of the kiss lodge in his jaw and writhe down his spine.

Matoba’s voice sings with the wanton ecstasy of a songbird, chest arched out and pale throat quivering, and Natori finds his hand going down to stroke between Matoba’s thighs just to play him, to coax from his vocal chords a string of moans dancing up in an erratic scale. Matoba’s back arches with the graceful motion of a sea creature, the sleek line in his body drawn upwards on an invisible spider’s thread to meet flush with Natori’s chest, the hiss of Natori’s own voice as their bodies meet reminiscent of that heated brand, the fiery contact of flesh on flesh.

Matoba feels familiar beneath his fingers, that missing something that fills the palm of his hand, that trembles hot and slick beneath his fingers as he moves, as he scrapes with a nail, teases between the folds of skin. Matoba chirps out a cry that reverberates in Natori’s ears; only later will he realize that he has never heard anyone call out his name like that before, in a voice so high and pure he might have sworn it came from an angel.

And yet what angel would have willingly torn off its wings to be soiled by him, to make one half of a grotesque animal with its eight limbs and two connected spines?

“Stop,” Matoba groans, pushing weakly at Natori’s shoulder, “Shuuichi-san, wait, stop, I— _ah—ah_ , ple—ase, wait—”

One part of him wants to drive his hips forward harder than before, to push deep into Matoba’s deepest recesses and puncture that dark core, but a more rational function in him catches on, restrains him with a energy he hadn't known existed till then.

“What… is it?” Natori pants, eyes wide and staring down at Matoba’s lust-flushed face, light in those crimson irises swirling with something so pleasurable he almost mistakes it for pain.

Matoba doesn't reply, speaks with a palm pressed against his collarbone, pushing him back, and Natori slides out with a sound that makes them both look away, consumed by flashes of their own private pleasure.

Matoba sits up, struggling to close his legs, and leans forward, palm against the tatami for support. Natori’s gaze follows the round, full swell of his shoulder, down in a toned, straight line to where his wrist barely covers the apex of his thighs. It's extremely erotic, knowing exactly what's hidden behind that hand, and yet not being able to see.

Matoba kneels up with some effort, then swings back down to a predatory crawl, his ass high in the air. He makes his way slowly towards Natori, the sway of his hips intensely suggestive in the moonlight. As he moves he catches the moon’s milky shine, tilts it from hipbone to hipbone, smears it across both his cheeks. Natori fights the growing lump in his throat.

“I wanna ride,” Matoba purrs with his lids lowered, gazing up at Natori through his dense, burnt-sienna lashes. His hand is on Natori’s chest all of a sudden, and the blinding heat slaps him like a whiplash.

Natori lets Matoba push him over, lets his back fall onto the tatami, watches Matoba mount him between his legs with a mesmerized, breath-stopped stillness.

Matoba sinks Natori in right up to the hilt on the first go, and then leans forward so that Natori slides out a little, half outside and half in. He begins to fuck himself onto Natori shallowly with exaggerated moans, concentrating the grip of his tight heat around the head of Natori’s aching cock. It's driving him crazy.

“Matoba—”

“Shuu-ichi-san,” Matoba pants, low and urgent, “Do you wanna fuck me? Do you wanna go all the way in? See, like this—” he sits down, hard, with a high, keening sigh, and Natori almost loses it.

“Yes,” he tries to say, but the sound just sticks in his throat, lodges firmly above his Adam’s apple. Matoba takes his silence for provocation.

“Oh, once wasn't enough? I'll do it again— _ah—_ and again, _aah!_ —until you come inside me, _hah—_ I wanna be wet, wet inside with your— _ah, hah_ , your cum, Shuuichi-san—”

“ _Fuck_ , Matoba—”

“Come… inside, Shuu—ichi, san,” Matoba pants, eyes wide and glistening with the entrails of lust, and Natori jerks forwards with a cry, spilling into Matoba’s body, throat closing up as he spasms, nails carving raw red trails against Matoba’s pale skin. “Matoba,” he moans, the last vowel hitching as he sucks in a breath fueled by sensitivity, and pulls Matoba down so he can kiss the flushed face, the reddened cheeks.

“Shuuichi-san…”

“Here,” Natori pants, and gets his fingers all the way round Matoba’s cock, slipping over the slickness as he works his hand up and down. It's rough, hard and tight and intense, and Natori makes sure to squeeze just a little too hard for it to be fully pleasurable, but Matoba comes within the minute, throwing his head back so Natori gets a lovely glimpse of his pretty throat.

Matoba ends up on top of Natori, chest pressed against chest, his chin over Natori’s shoulder so that the shells of their ears brush together with every one of Matoba’s gradually slowing breaths. Natori finds his fingers stroking across Matoba’s body, tracing the dip where the muscles cleave his back in the centre.

The sun is starting to come up over the edge of the far wall of the courtyard, bits of light glinting against the roof tiles.

“Looks like I won’t be going to school today,” Matoba announces dryly. “Shuuichi-san, will you call me in sick?”

Natori sighs. “You really do everything in your power to make my life miserable, don’t you?”

“Always. Don’t forget, Shuuichi-san—you still have that mess you said you’d clean up.”

Natori groans.

“—But if you’re willing to come by and make me porridge after school, I’ll let that one go.”

Natori considers his options and realises that realistically, he only really has one.

“…Fine.”


End file.
